


Oh Danny Boy

by preferredmethodofprocrastination



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: M/M, The start of Civil War, hahahahahahahaha I'm sad now
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-31
Updated: 2016-01-31
Packaged: 2018-05-17 11:01:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,407
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5866840
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/preferredmethodofprocrastination/pseuds/preferredmethodofprocrastination
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Peggy's funeral could be the death of both of them, in some small way.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Oh Danny Boy

**Author's Note:**

> I don't really know if I need to do a disclaimer but better safe than sorry. I do not own any of the characters created by Marvel Comics or displayed in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

 

They stood face to face. This was a battle of wills as much as, if not more than, it was a battle of strength. Tony and Steve were inches from one another, neither of them armed but both of them deadly. They were bare to each other’s cruel jabs, both mental and physical.

“It’s not as if you honestly think any one of your precious good old day friends would have wanted anything but for all of the freaks of the world to be put on a list and watched,” Tony had tears running down his face. He was red and blotchy, and quite possibly as angry as he had ever been. So was Steve. This funeral hadn’t been any good for their already strained relationship.

“You think you know them when you talk about them. You think you know how they would have wanted to be perceived, but you don’t. You are as oblivious to their true nature as they were to yours,  _ son _ ,” he spat on the ground next to Tony’s Italian leather shoes.

“Don’t call me,  _ son _ ,  _ old man _ . I have been and always will be a fatherless child. My dad never loved me. Closest thing I ever had to a father was Jarvis, till my “father’s” work got him killed,” Tony shoved Steve and Steve took it like a mountain being shoved by a toddler. He didn’t push back. Tony punched again and again against Steve’s chest and then smacked him in the face hard enough to break a normal man’s jaw. Steve was unfazed; in fact, Tony wrung his hands afterwards, his palm stinging from the impact.

“He may not have acted like it, but Howard loved you, and you know that,” Steve growled his defense of his old friend out, almost as if it pained him to say it. He knew Howard hadn’t been a good father, but he had to make himself believe that he had loved Tony.

“My dad changed a lot after you. You made him the monster he was. He crucified himself trying to recreate something half as “good” as you,” Tony hissed. “He sank into a pit of lies so deep he couldn’t drown it out with all the alcohol in the world,” Tony shoved Steve again, just for the satisfaction of it. “He liked knowing what he was up against. He’d have bribed and lobbied the bill through Congress and the White House too if need be, and you don’t want to admit it, but so would she,” Tony tore the program from the funeral out of his breast pocket and shoved it into Steve’s hands.

“Don’t bring her into this,” Steve was becoming more and more angry. He’d had a long day of fighting his way through crowds of reporters and fans and, eventually, policemen as he had gone to and from the funeral.

“She’s why this started,” Tony hissed, referring to their argument. “She would have wanted this Steve.” Steve’s mind turned stormier than his heart. He wanted to fight now. His clenched his fists at his sides, trying to protect the pieces of Peggy’s memory that he held so dear. She was still so pure and untouched in his mind. A smear of red passion and lipstick in the mud and blood of a war far in the past.

“Peggy would never…” Steve started, but he was interrupted.

“There it is again. You think you knew her and you didn’t. She was just like my dad before her memory went. Just as sad and alone, all nailed to your pretty little SHIELD. All done up like she was waiting for you at that damn dancehall,” Tony slammed his hands on a nearby table and broke two wine glasses with his angry fists. “You martyred yourself and it killed them too, you selfish, no good, dirty rotten son of a…”

“Tony,” Steve warned. “Stop.”

“She was the queen of intelligence. She always knew where her enemies were, but more importantly, she knew where her friends were, but she also knew where her people were,” he paused, looking for a moment at his bleeding hands. “She knew you better than you knew yourself, Peggy. She knew your strengths, your weaknesses, all of it before she spoke to you the first time.”

“Tony,” Steve mumbled, tears streaming afresh down his face.

“What is it now?” Tony turned to Steve, considerably calmed and sobered by the pieces of crystal he was trying pull from his palms.

“I miss them too,” they were close again, just as angry, just as desperate for someone to feel something, anything but admiration for them. “I miss them so much,” Tony had been egging Steve on, begging for him to hit him back. He wanted Steve to hate him, to beat him half to death, to make the pain of Peggy’s loss stop. Steve wanted, no, needed, just the opposite. He needed a loving touch. He needed someone to love the pain away from his aching soul.

“Screw you,” Tony dragged the last piece of glass from his palm and grabbed Steve by the lapels of his suit. The blood from his hands stained the white shirt beneath Steve’s cashmere coat. He pulled him so close that the bridges of their noses pressed together. It was so close to a kiss it was infuriating. “Shut up and kiss me,” Tony pressed his lips to Steve’s in the semblance of a kiss. It was too rough for one, though, too full of rage to be a kiss. He could feel his hands sticking to Steve’s shirt in a blissful painful way. He could feel the fibers of his shirt sticking in the gore of his wounds, making the pain just that much sharper and Steve pulled him close and made their embrace of lips and bodies more deeply, painfully, intimate. Tony pulled away for a moment to take a breathe Steve’s breath back to him, to beat his fists against Steve’s chest and to hate himself for the things he did to himself and to his world. 

“I love you, Tony,” Steve whispered, there in the empty reception room, covered in blood and surrounded by glass shards. “But I can’t stand for taking away a person’s right to be who they want to be.”

“They’re only lying to protect themselves from the truth, Steve,” Tony pressed a series of short, desperate kisses to Steve’s lips, wincing because his were bruised from their previous caress. “They have to own up to it sometime.” Steve’s next kiss was a biting one that made Tony blush from the chest up. Steve let go only to speak.

“No. They’re lying to protect themselves from people like you,” Steve fiddled absentmindedly with the first button on Tony’s shirt before breaking their embrace.

“Where do we go from here, Steve?” Tony whimpered.

“Our separate ways,” Steve left the scene like a boy going off to war. His head was bowed in prayer and Tony knew this wouldn’t end well for either of them. It brought to mind a song he heard Peggy sing from time to time. She sang the mournful aria, the sweet melody when she thought of Steve. It was fitting for him, really. A song about an Irish Catholic boy going off to wage a war he wouldn’t see the end of. Tony opened his mouth and began to sing softly in his ringing tenor. The world froze as he intoned the words. Steve stood in the open doorway and waited till Tony had sung every line of the song.

 

“O Danny Boy, the pipes, the pipes are calling

From glen to glen and down the mountainside.

The summer's gone and all the roses falling.

'Tis you, 'tis you must go and I must bide.

 

But come ye back when summer's in the meadow,

Or all the valley's hushed and white with snow.

'Tis I'll be here in sunshine or in shadow.

O Danny Boy, O Danny Boy, I love you so.

………… 

So if you've died and crossed the stream before us,

We pray that angels met you on the shore;

And you'll look down, and gently you'll implore us

To live so we may see your smiling face once more,

Once more.”

Steve’s body shook with silent tears. Their final goodbye. Their last hoorah. Their final fond farewell before they started trying to kill each other. Of course it ended in blood and tears.

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for Bbotts9797. I wrote it for her a while ago because Stony was her sirens call. Also this song kills me.


End file.
